On February 22, 1933, in a small room in New York, five men observe carefully to a motionless body. The light of a yellow lamp manages to illuminate the face of who seems to be asleep. It’s about Michael Malloy. People around him do not dare, this time, even to get a little closer to what they will know later is a corpse. They know that Michael, like so many times when they tried to take their lives to collect insurance, could suddenly wake up. Thus, the blow to them would be to run into that hoarse growl with which Malloy would ask again: one more glass!
Irish immigrant, defined, alcoholic and unemployedMalloy became known as “the immortal”, which survived poisons, accidents and nights of hypothermia. For this reason, the newspapers would baptize it Iron Mike, and its history would become an urban legend, a mixture of tragedy and black comedy that still resonates almost a century later, even in popular songs such as the House of Hamill trio that says: “That Malloy man will not die / see you in the morning.”
But that last night, in the closed and suffocating room, something had changed and on his condition the uncertainty reigned: Malloy took strength for his next return or was he decidedly dead?
A homeless
Michael Malloy was born in 1873 in Donegal County, Ireland, a region marked by poverty and the massive exodus towards America. Like many compatriots, he arrived in New York at the end of the 19th century in search of a better life.
At first, Malloy worked as a firefighterrisking in a city where fires were as frequent as bar fights. After, He got employment as a stationary engineer, handling boilers and steam systems in factories. They were hard but respectable trades, and for a while, Malloy seemed to have found a course.
However, the weight of loneliness and disenchantment pushed him to get lost in alcohol. Life in New York was face and cruel to poor immigrants. Soon, the hidden bars became their shelter and, the cheap whiskey, in their only comfort. By the 20s, Malloy had lost everything: home, work, dignity. He roamed the streets, offering his hands for any task in exchange for a couple of drinks.
The great depression hit New York, leaving thousands of people in the street. Malloy, already accustomed to precarious life, barely noticed the difference. He slept in parks banks, ate what he found out there and spent the days in the Speakeasies, clandestine bars where alcohol ran freely despite the ban.
It was in one of those bars, owned by Tony Marino on the third avenue, where he began to take shape The macabre plan to kill Malloy and collect insurance. The owner looked at him with contempt and greed and coveted him along with a group of men also beaten by economic depression: Joseph “Red” Murphy, Francis Pasqua, Hershey Green and Daniel Kriesberg.
They were not simple cartoon villains but victims of the system like Malloy, but with some more luck and much less ethics. With the help of a corrupt insurance agent, they obtained several policies in the name of “Nicholas Mellory”, an alias invented for the occasion, with the intention of charging more than $ 3,500 (equivalent to about 85,000) for the accidental death of Malloy.
What followed was one of the most clumsy and absurd murder attempts in American criminal history.
Malloy was given antifreeze, waterfall, horsepower lining and rats poison. But nothing killed him.
Two of Malloy’s murderers: Francis Pasqua and Tony Marino.The death that never arrived
The initial strategy was simple: let Malloy drink to the alcoholic coma. They offered him an unlimited account at the Marine Bar, and Malloy accepted without any effort. Day after day, I drank non -stop, mixing cheap whiskey with gin and brandy. But far from dying, Malloy seemed to revitalize.
His resistance amazed the conspirators, who decided to raise the bet. The next step was to replace alcohol with an antifreeze. Malloy drank it with the same naturalness and without collateral effects. Deconcied, they were for more and changed the antifreeze for Avarrás, then for horsepower and finally for rats poison. Nothing worked.
Ethanol consumption, a substance that acts as an antidote by preventing the absorption of ponzoñas, could be determined as an efficient cause of their survival. The conspirators did not give up and devised increasingly grotesque methods.
He was offered raw oysters soaked in Methyl alcohol, based on the transcended that someone had died when ingesting a mixture of seafood with whiskey. Without suspicion, Malloy swallowed them, as he devoured everything that came later, like that rotten sardines, poison and carpet studs. At the end of it, Malloy asked for another equal.
A winter night, Malloy had drunk so much that he did not attend reasons and the conspirators took the opportunity to throw it outdoors. He was lying under an intense snowfall and on his bare chest emptied several drums of ice water. But, for that fate that accompanies some and leaves others, Malloy was found by police officers who took him to a shelter, where he recovered quickly.
On another occasion, They overwhelmed him with the taxi of Hershey Green at 72 kilometers per hour and broke him endless bones. However, after spending three weeks hospitalized, Malloy reappeared at the bar, asking for another drink.
The trial was a media show. Four of the defendants were executed in the electric chair.
The American press became a feast with the case.The consummate
Finally, on February 22, 1933, they decided to use an infallible method. It all started in the known and easy area: it was necessary to get drunk. Already ready, they took him to the “Red” Murphy room, They placed a hose connected to a coal gas and suffocated.
This time, Malloy didn’t wake up. The death certificate, signed by Dr. Frank Manzella, Lobar’s Neumonia said as a cause of death. The conspirators quickly buried Malloy, anxious to collect the insurance. However, the rumors about the sudden death of the indestructible Iron Mike reached police ears, who exhumated the body and discovered the truth.
The trial was a media show. The five conspirators, nicknamed The Murder Trust. Four of them were executed in the electric chair in Sing Sing in 1934. Taxiist Green, who had only participated in the outrage, received several years in jail. Manzella, accused of being an accomplice, was punishable with a fine and received a minor sentence for not reporting suspicious death.
Malloy’s story has inspired radio programs, series and song episodes. Its history is a mixture of tragedy and black humor, and staging the strength of the loop between greed and atrocious actions.
Michael Malloy, who mocked death so many times, ended up becoming a legend not because of his tragedy, but because of the incredulous laugh with which he challenged misery. The story of that Irish immigrant who did not know when to fall, which crossed poisons, frosts and abuses to continue asking for another cup, left at least one certainty: sometimes, Immortality does not depend on defeating death, but on refusing to die with obedience.